a mooky little girl like you

Last night we carved pumpkins for Halloween. (To see the rest of the pictures, click here.) The night went something like this...

• Mom cut the tops off of the two pumpkins.
  
• Seth and Maryn each scooped out maybe two handfuls of pumpkin innards then turned the rest of the yucky scooping work over to (you guessed it) Mom.
  
• Dad carved the scary tree and Mom carved the ghost into the pumpkins.
  
• Everyone went outside to admire all of the hard work.

(And this activity was supposed to be for the kids?)

The cutest/strangest part of the evening was Maryn. She kept saying that the pumpkins were "berry berry mooky". It took us a while to figure out that she meant "spooky". That was the cute part, the strange part was this- Maryn has started stuttering. She has always stuttered a little bit but in the past few days, the frequency has increased more than 100%. She stutters on almost every word she says. I'm a bit concerned and totally shocked because it came on so suddenly. My parents tell me that I stuttered a lot as a child (and frankly, I still do). And Seth stutters too at times, usually when he's trying hard to get my attention. But this is way worse that anything I have heard from either of my kids. I realize that she does this because her little brain is moving faster than her speech can keep up with. But it still worries me. Above all, doesn't every mother want their kids to be normal and not have anything "wrong" with them?